Blogging, Social Media & Networking, Web Tools
Do We Need a Christian Social News Aggregators?
I found another social news aggregator for christian sites and it made me question whether or not we really need them (yet)?
This one, Zoecity.com, is nothing new and feeds blog entries and interesting content from a number of well-known christian blogs and news outlets.
And hey, it even comes with it’s own digg-bar-esque feature! Shall we call it the Zoecity-bar?
What are your thoughts? Do we need something like this? What if it were to be done really well?
Let me hear it.
Buzz it!
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26 Responses to “Do We Need a Christian Social News Aggregators?”
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Nah..I think http://church.alltop.com does a pretty good job of getting the good stuff.
but you can't vote… is this functionality needed?
If done well it could bring good articles to people's attention that they might not otherwise hear about. On the other hand, a lot of people will probably find out about the same articles via RSS or Twitter.
The problem with all of the Christian aggregators in the past is they have been dominated by spammers before acquiring a critical mass of good content. Developers haven't been willing to put in the time or effort to combat the spam or build the community.
good points paul.
I really do not think we do. To be honest we already have this on twitter and other blogs.
The christian community (in regards to social media) is pretty small. It is fairly easy to stay up with what is going on. You just have to read about 3 blogs and follow about 10 people on twitter and you have all the info you need on where to go and what to read.
I think in all honesty it is making the community a lot smaller and really boxing us in, myself included.
cool.
I think it is needed, personally. And I think that if it were done really, REALLY well it would be an asset.
I'd argue that the Christian blogging world is actually much larger than we assume it is. I think we assume it's small because of how intertwined we perceive it to be. But that's just the small segment of it that we pay attention to, because it fits our own mindset best.
Whether that mindset is based upon theology, cultural integration, or the way we present the message online. No matter the metric, we're looking at a fraction of what's out there in each particular Christian sub-circle.
i think i agree here. i think we have some serious challenges that the world doesn't have to deal with.
The challenge with aggregation, is the loss of context which inherently follows. What spurred someone to say what they do and why is it important to them, and me? However the flip side is that the blogging world, while dominated by a number of heavy weights, none the less is a discussion forum, albeit a dispersed one. Why cut ourselves off from the wider field just because they don't have an "important" blog?
Maybe these aggregators can encourage us to read and dialogue on a wider scale?
huh, that's a good perspective daniel. never thought about it that way.
When I think of social news aggregation, I think of Digg.com….for obvious reasons. But the articles posted on Digg are merely links back to the original content. Granted, the large comment madness occurs on the aggregation site, but still.
I'd think that a site that did the same thing Digg does, but for Christian-related blogs, news articles, other content, and did it in the same fashion would really open up people to influences that they wouldn't otherwise access.
I think it would force the users (at least the heavy users) to read & dialogue on a wider scale, with people outside of their immediate sphere of influence. That content would rise to the top based upon the content itself, not whose blog it originally appeared on. Granted, popular blogs get more diggs faster, but that's the nature of these things.
One thing we definitely don't need is another annoying horizontal, top bar that sits at top: 0, position: absolute, and z-index: 99999. and on top of the content. Dude. I hate those things for so many reasons. Ugh.
Okay, with that</em said…
I've got mixed emotions on stuff like this. On one hand, I think "no, we don't need this." After all, we've got RSS, Email, Twitter, and Google. If we wanna aggregate Christian blogs, then we can do it ourselves.
But then I remember that I my life amounts to sitting in front of a computer. Not everyone does that.
When I think about it from a less selfish and more realistic angle, I think that maybe these kinds of sites are useful. I mean, it pulls a lot of content together from a variety of sources from people that may not be able to find it on their own. It's kind of a win-win for everyone, isn't it?
..Even those of us that spend half our life staring at pixels could find something new through stuff like this..
thanks for your thoughts. yeah. i'm not a fan of those either…
You are also welcome for broken HTML and italicized everything.
yes. thanks for that.
Perhaps we need them.
I think the advantage of Digg is the ability to sort by subject is helpful. This helps personalize the experience. It will also help solve the signal to noise problem, which this site doesn't really address in an effective way.
I will admit that Zoe City is probably a newer site and perhaps thats why they've forgone subject headings. However, this is nothing that seeding the content can't solve.
It seems like it would be useful for a bigger site with an existing community to build this out or buy it out (ie Tangle, the site formerly known as God Tube).
How is it any different than a Christian tag at Delicious or Dig or whatever?
it's a dedicated landing page.
I guess I meant about its function. How does the purpose it serves any different than a tag on an existing site. Maybe there is some great benefit to having a separate site, but I see it as a risk at further isolating Christian content from everyone else.
eh. it's already an isolationalist site to begin with…
you'd have to create some super-unique high value for this network for me to visit…
I'd like to know if one exists. I've seen about a dozen Christian social news sites and honestly they are all pretty useless because there is so little traffic on them. We really need a critical mass to make something like digg.
perhaps we'll see one good enough soon…
;0
Hi guys. My name is Colin Wong and I am the CEO of Zoecity. First, thank you so much for covering Zoecity on ChurchCrunch. I must admit, we're very pleasantly surprised. Zoecity has not launched yet but will be in a few weeks. We're putting the final touches now and including a few more features to come.
Allow me to address some of the comments made here. One of the main reasons we did Zoecity was to address the *perception* that there is either no good Christian focused content or much of what exists is cheesy. We wanted to find a way to aggregate the best Christian content intelligently. So its not a straight matter of aggregating RSS feeds and pushing them. We wanted to be able to filter and rank the content in value as well.
We're sorta similar to Digg but we see ourselves as going to the next level. Instead of having users explicitly vote on content, we feel that the act of sharing is a much stronger signal for value. You can "digg" an article, but if you share it to your friends/family on Twitter/Facebook, you're putting your reputation on the line.
So content on Zoecity is ranked by the aggregation of Facebook share and Twitter RTs. The more sharing activity an article has, the higher it is ranked. We track content from hundreds of Christian focused websites. We also allow you to submit content either by directly sending the URL to us, or just by adding the "#zoecity" tag in your Twitter post.
From there we push the best of the best out on our feeds. Daily Top 12 Christian articles are pushed out on our Twitter, Facebook and Wordpress plugin feed. The Weekly Top 20 is pushed out on our newsletters. And so forth.
Zoecity is still very much a "beta" product. We welcome your feedback and hope to hear more from you guys
Colin
Sure thing! thanks for taking some of our content here … … …?
When is the official launch date? How are you going to create exceptional value outside of your stated ones? I don't see much original with what you're doing. Is it just perception?
The official launch is sometime around the week of the 25th.
The value we provide is we sift through the hundreds of websites to find the nuggets so you don't have to. I'm not aware of other Christian content aggregation websites that do *exactly* the way we do. The issue with aggregation has always been the mechanism for filtering signal-to-noise. Digg was super successful because they created a feedback loop by way of the Digg button to crowdsource popular content.
I've seen some Christian aggregation sites that tried to do this but they've all failed because you need significant traction i.e. have everyone install your vote button in order to succeed. Then there are those who just aggregate RSS feeds and throw everything out to a feed. Not too useful as I can do the same with my Google RSS Reader and its customized to me.
Our approach is to side-step the chicken-and-egg situation of crowsourced voting by directly monitoring what's happening in Facebook and Twitter. Since Twitter re-tweets and Facebook re-shares are essentially very strong signals of value, we can directly rank the content without a need for voting buttons. Hence we overcome the chicken-and-egg that other Christian site aggregators could not.
To put it in another way, if I were to vote or give a thumbs up on an article I obviously believe its of value. But if I share it to my friends on Facebook/Twitter then I'm not only saying its of value but I'm putting my reputation on the line. Since we directly monitor Facebook and Twitter, publishers do not need to install any badge or button.
Even if you disagree with our approach, at the very least you'll know what Christian article/video/story/news is currently having the most impact on social networks. At the end of the day, we just want to be able to present the most relevant stories that impact your life as a Christian.
I hope I have not misunderstood your question. Hope this helps
Colin